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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27803425">three kisses</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics'>fluffysfics</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, Introspection, Kissing, Mildly Dubious Consent, but just because of the identity thing, but like...soft angst, the Master’s self esteem issues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:23:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,519</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27803425</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An account of every time Agent O has kissed the Doctor.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>three kisses</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>O has kissed three Doctors, in a sense. </p><p></p><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Master knows that O is just a fiction. His own invention; the sweet, soft data analyst, tech-savvy and shy with a secretly slightly morbid sense of humour. Perfect. Innocent enough on the surface to draw the Doctor in, and dark enough underneath to keep them close. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But even though he is O and O is him, he can’t help separating their actions. O goes to work at MI6, smiles at his colleagues even though they hate him, sits at his desk with a mug of expensive coffee and crunches numbers for eight hours a day as he imagines murdering his coworkers. The Master walks home afterwards, drives his fist into the wall to relieve a little frustration, and quiets down the anger when that doesn’t work by putting real effort into cooking himself a meal. Sometimes, the lines blur a bit. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But they’re never so clear as when he’s around the Doctor. If he, the Master, allowed himself the luxury of speaking to the Doctor, he would scream. He would berate them, and beg to know <em>why</em>, and swamp them with his miserable fury until they were on their knees and pleading for his forgiveness. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>So O handles that part of his life, and that is why the Master can still pine for the old days, the Doctor’s gentle affection, even though it hasn’t really been that long since he’s had it, in a sense. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The first time the Doctor kissed O, it left his head spinning for days. It left the Master stunned, left him questioning his entire plan, left him furious and shaken and pained. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>It had been the one with the stupid bow tie. The first day they’d met. A day that the Master had put <em>so</em> much effort into- faking a perfect mid-sized alien invasion, not too much threat but not too little either, carefully placing clues that would lead the Doctor right to MI6- and it had worked <em>perfectly</em>. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He’d watched in satisfaction as the Doctor walked straight into the room full of data analysts, exactly on schedule, and then O had stood up and volunteered some information and been sweet and shy and <em>brave</em>. All of those things that the Doctor couldn’t resist. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He’d spent the next hour being dragged around by the hand much faster than he ever wanted to move. And at the end of it, he’d offered the Doctor his phone number, and the Doctor had grinned and taken it, and then he’d <em>kissed</em> O. Not even a proper kiss. But his hands had been in O’s hair, strong and warm, and excited lips had stayed pressed against his forehead for at least a second and a half. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>That Doctor kissed like an excited puppy. If they’d ever had time for a proper snog, the Master would have put him on a leash first. He’d needed it. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But then he’d regenerated. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>——</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>It’s almost a relief, when the next one doesn’t text him half as much. There’s still so much lingering heartache left, Missy’s desire for love, that would no doubt make him act foolishly if he spent too much time around that one. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Master would honestly have been fine if he’d never have seen that version of the Doctor in person. But the universe seemed determined to be endlessly cruel to him, these days. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The lack of texting meant that he had been utterly unprepared for when the Doctor walked into MI6, trailing Clara and several frustrated scientists that she seemed to be trying to pacify. This one was a force of nature- he did what he wanted, not much caring what the rest of the universe thought of him. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“O,” he’d said, and the sound of his name in that stern Scottish accent had sent a shiver right down his spine. One word, and he was already quite thoroughly a mess. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>They’d talked a little; the Doctor had wanted O to provide some data on a thing, and O had been happy to oblige, because he was always, always happy to oblige the Doctor. That was one of the parts where his character unfortunately blurred a little too close to reality. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Then, because he’d been feeling bold, he’d decided to speak up as the Doctor had turned to leave the room. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“What- no kiss? Got a kiss from you last time.” </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Doctor had snorted, had raised his fingers to his lips and blown him a decidedly sarcastic kiss, which was perhaps worse than not getting one at all. He had been sure that he didn’t remember that Doctor being quite so grumpy. Perhaps this one had been early on in his personal timeline. Pre-Missy, maybe. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Regardless of the Doctor’s placement in his personal timeline, that incident had left the Master stung for days, and decidedly sulky about texting the Doctor any more for a while. Rejection was not a human emotion that O enjoyed, the Master used as his justification, wondering how hard he’d have to push his emotions onto O before they stopped bothering <em>him</em>, too. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>——</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>It catches both O and the Master entirely by surprise when the Doctor regenerates again. As far as the Master had known, the grumpy one was still around, after having left him to die out on that space station. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But clearly not. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The new Doctor is bubbly, and happy, and <em>sweet</em>, and it takes the Master all of five seconds to realise that she’s putting on just as much of a façade as O. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>And once he sees through her disguise, she opens up, and he is treated to a vast, yawning chasm of pain and nightmares and inadequacy and intimacy issues and- and- it never <em>stops</em>. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>For two years, in his time, he plays therapist. He plays the adoring, patient confidant, always there for the Doctor, always full of kind advice and reassurances. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Master kind of loves it. He kind of loves <em>her</em>. She’s worn to the bone, and a little twisted, and it brings him no small amount of sadistic joy to build her back up, and to know how much the parts of her that he repairs will sting and wrench at her when he finally reveals his identity. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Some days, he considers making himself human for good, just so that he can keep on adoring her forever. He tries to consign that desire to the O part of him, but it keeps spilling over into his real thoughts, and there’s nothing that he can do about it. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But the Master stays strong. He moves out to to Australia, and three months later, the Doctor arrives. They trap a Kasaavin, retrieve a rather traumatised Yasmin Khan (he likes this one- she reminds him a little of Clara, when he’d first picked her out for the Doctor) from another dimension, and then they settle down for the night. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Half an hour later, the Doctor walks into his room. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Master has made sure to perfectly craft O, to make him the perfect amount of sleepy and tousled, just in case this eventuality occurred. And it seems to work; she stops in the doorway when she sees him, and an emotion or ten flicker across her face. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Hi,” she says. “Been all busy, haven’t had the chance to talk. Properly, I mean.” </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“I know what you mean,” the Master says, sitting up in bed. He motions to the end of his mattress, hesitates, and then also offers her the use of a chair that is currently cluttered with books. She takes the end of his mattress. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He feels it dip under her weight, and he leans forward a little- he hasn’t seen this version of her quite so close-up yet. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Her eyes are a soft hazel in the dim light of his bedroom. Her hair is <em>gold</em>, properly gold, and his fingers twitch with how much they want to comb through it. The shirt she’s wearing exposes sharp collarbones- the Master is struck by a sudden urge to <em>bite</em>, even though he knows that O never would. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He’s staring, and consequently, it takes him a minute to realise that the Doctor is staring, too. He’s designed O to be as attractive as possible to every version of her. Somehow, the knowledge that it <em>worked</em> still has butterflies swirling in his stomach. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“You’re very striking in person, Doctor,” he says softly. So softly, so gently, in a voice that hardly feels like his own. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“You look like you always do,” she says back. “Not surprising, really. And today’s been so busy. Weird. So I totally get it if you want me to go away now and let you sleep. But I...I just-“</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>She braces her hands on the mattress, and leans over to kiss him like a shy teenager on a date with her crush. It’s as sweet as her façade, but the Master knows that this is genuine. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Equally genuine are the warm tingles that run from the top of his scalp right down to his toes, leaving him stunned. Leaving him smiling like an idiot. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“I guess I can still kiss people this time,” the Doctor says thoughtfully. “You...I’m not reading you wrong, yeah? You liked that?” </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He nods. Speech is not an option. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Good.” Her shoulders relax a little. “I want more.” </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>With that, she scoots up along the bed, sliding one hand into the back of his hair and the other around his waist, and she kisses him <em>properly</em>. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>A simple forehead kiss had wrecked him for days. This, the Master thinks, might change him permanently. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Doctor’s lips are soft, <em>so</em> soft, but they are purposeful- they slide against his own, and her teeth graze gently over his skin, and it makes him shiver. The way she holds him is ridiculously tender- like he’s something fragile, something she must take the utmost care of lest he break in her arms. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Master hates how much he likes it. He hates himself; it’s a deep-seated loathing for the way this body is too soft, too clumsy, too angry, not good for anything except awkwardly charming the Doctor. Made for her, as ever. But as she kisses him, slow and gentle and <em>loving</em>, he feels like O. He feels like someone worthy of her attention, and that is just about the greatest compliment that could be bestowed upon any human. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The first time the Doctor kissed O, it knocked his resolve. The second time somehow strengthened it a little. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But the third shatters it completely. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>They’re still kissing an hour later. The Master has managed to lose his shirt at some point, and the Doctor has contrived to remain fully clothed, which irks the part of him that wants more. Every part of her that he can see is dazzling; he wants to run his fingertips over the rest of her, wants to press his lips over each of her hearts, feel them beat just a little bit faster for him. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>But when he pulls away, tries to nudge her coat off, the Doctor shakes her head. “Not tonight, O,” she says softly. “Too risky, yeah? This- we can stop this any time. Bit harder to go defend ourselves against aliens if we’re all naked and...you know.” She makes a vague flapping gesture with her hands that is probably somehow meant to represent sex. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Yeah. I suppose so,” the Master agrees quietly, leaning in to kiss her again. He can’t get enough of how she tastes, how she smells, how her hair and her neck and the warmth of her skin feels under his hands. He wants to break her apart and explore every inch of her. He wants to tell her who he is and throw himself on her mercy, beg at her feet for forgiveness. He wants to <em>scream</em>. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>It’s another hour before the Doctor breaks away again, and announces that she wants a snack. The Master feels just about ready to melt- his mind is in turmoil, agonising over whether or not to carry on with his plan. If he surreptitiously killed Barton, and dealt with the Kasaavin <em>somehow</em>- maybe he could destroy the Silver Lady, or- or—</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>Before he can catastrophize any more, the Doctor offers him a custard cream. He blinks at it. “Where’d you-“</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Pockets,” she says, wiggling one hand and then proceeding to shove her entire arm shoulder-deep into a pocket that should <em>not</em> have been able to fit her entire arm. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Oh,” the Master says, taking the custard cream. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“That’s your name.” The Doctor grins at him, looking ridiculously happy. Looking like she doesn’t have the first clue how much emotional conflict she’s hurled him into. How is he supposed to focus on anything ever again, with the memory of the Doctor’s kisses still lingering on his lips?</p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“Certainly is,” the Master says, and starts to slowly eat his custard cream. The Doctor devours four in the time it takes him to get through one, and when she kisses him again, there’s still a crumb on her lips. It’s kind of endearing. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He breaks away after only a few minutes this time, and moves to lie down against the pillows. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>“You’re very distracting, but I’m tired, Doctor. Can’t fight aliens on no sleep.” A very human excuse, but an effective one. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>She looks disappointed for a minute, and then her face brightens. She shrugs her coat off, and lies down behind him, snaking her arms around his waist and pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. “Don’t know why they call this spooning,” she mumbles. “All these legs involved, we look more like a fork.” </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Master snorts with laughter despite himself. “Ah...I think forking means something a bit different,” he says, and she snickers when she gets the joke a moment later. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He wriggles back against the Doctor, pressing as much of himself against her as he can. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He has one night before she will hate him forever. He closes his eyes, and reminds himself why he is doing this- she is so many millennia older than him, and she will find out sooner or later, and then she will look at him with disgust for how much <em>less</em> than her he is. He might as well let that happen on his terms. Compounding that, she left him to die, left him to wake up in this body alone, with torn clothes, no shoes, no hope, and no way out. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>The Master repeats these facts to himself over and over, trying to convince himself that he despises her. That her arms around him aren’t the most comforting thing he’s felt in years. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>O has kissed the Doctor three times. The Master, as desperately as he tried not to, has kissed her as well. </p>
</div><div>
  <p> </p>
</div><div>
  <p>He’ll carry out his plan. He <em>will</em>. But throughout seventy-seven long years on Earth, throughout escaping from the Kasaavin, throughout his time trawling Gallifrey as he waits for her to discover the Boundary- he will never, <em>never</em> forget the burning, gentle press of the Doctor’s lips against his own. </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>the 13/O brain cell is back on its bullshit, everyone! hope y’all enjoyed, comments and kudos are very very much appreciated &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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